Creating Forms | Forms | Django Tutorial

Introduction

Forms are a crucial part of web applications. They allow users to submit data that can be processed and stored by the application. In Django, forms are easy to create and validate using Django's built-in form handling system.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Django Project

First, make sure you have Django installed. If not, you can install it using pip:

pip install django

Next, create a new Django project and a new app within that project:

django-admin startproject myproject

cd myproject

python manage.py startapp myapp

Step 2: Creating a Simple Form

Create a new file forms.py in your app directory (myapp/forms.py) and define a form:

from django import forms

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    name = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
    email = forms.EmailField()
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

This form has three fields: name, email, and message. The message field uses a textarea widget.

Step 3: Creating a View

Next, you'll need a view to handle the form. Open views.py in your app directory and add the following code:

from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import ContactForm

def contact(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = ContactForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            # Process the form data
            return render(request, 'thanks.html')
    else:
        form = ContactForm()
    return render(request, 'contact.html', {'form': form})

Step 4: Creating Templates

Create two new HTML files in a templates directory within your app: templates/contact.html and templates/thanks.html.

contact.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Contact Form</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Contact Us</h1>
    <form method="post">
        {% csrf_token %}
        {{ form.as_p }}
        <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

thanks.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Thank You</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Thank You!</h1>
    <p>Your message has been sent.</p>
</body>
</html>

Step 5: Updating URLs

Finally, update your app's urls.py to include a path for the contact view. Create a new file urls.py in your app directory and add the following code:

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('contact/', views.contact, name='contact'),
]

Don't forget to include your app's URLs in the project's main urls.py:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('myapp/', include('myapp.urls')),
]

Conclusion

That's it! You've created a simple contact form in Django. You can now extend this form to include more fields, validation, and processing logic as needed.

Creating Forms in Django